It’s true though, and there’s no technological improvement to communication software that can ever change this.
If you sit physically next to your colleagues, you can at all times see what they are working on, talking to each other about, etc., and thereby learn more about the project and the company; if you work remotely and have to explicitly choose to communicate, you miss out on all of that.
Constantly talking to your colleagues degrades the work quality, if anything. I don’t need to hear rumors about our manager’s ex to be able to work on projects
Our team has office days once or twice per month and fuck all gets done on those days. Time is spent on social chitchat, longer coffee breaks and lunch with more small talk, discussing random ideas and almost anything else than actual work. And those are really nice to have, when we’re mostly scattered across few cities and limited to text chat or calls they tend to be strictly about the task at hand. The office days give a sort of a break on normal schedule and while very little gets actually done the discussions often include planning future stuff, going trough previous changes, current situation and workload more broadly and so on. After those days, even if nothing got done, we’re all a bit more on board on almost everything and it’s nice to actually meet the people we interact with every day.
But for actual work, for the stuff we do, the office doesn’t offer anything we couldn’t do remotely. I have more comfortable setup at home than at my cubicle at office, I can listen to whatever I want at how loud I want without disturbing others, no hassle with commute (even if mine is pretty much as short as it can be) and so on.
Well, I think some fully remote is fine. However, I do think hybrid is the best model. Just my opinion.
One of the “dangers” of fully remote is that they become fully global. The amount a company will pay becomes disconnected from the cost-of-living. That creates inequity. Not just that employees in richer areas may be underpaid but also that remote employees for rich companies may be paid far more than their countrymen in their home market.
I don’t really like the idea of running decades of income lottery while the global order works this all out.
Even within a single country it can be fairly extreme.
Your point is actually what makes remote work so much more effective. When you work in an office, you get used to things working by chance - people seeing what others are doing, talking about it on coffee breaks and so on. When everybody is working remotely, you quickly realize that those things that happened by chance were actually a lot more important than it might seem at first - and then you can do the dumb thing and go back to having it happen by chance, or you can change your processes to ensure that everyone who may have anything to say about what you’re doing, know that you’re doing it.
I talk with someone away from my desk and meetings happen without me (doesn’t happen at home, no one there to talk to)
I make a coffee, in the office kitchen, and don’t notice the ding on my computer (doesn’t happen at home as the kitchen is near the study)
Last time I had to be in the office was to support new staff, so the missed meetings were due to talking to the new staff (but mostly about Minecraft)
I know I’m more productive at home, I’m pretty sure all the programmers are happier at home due to the lesser noise
I think when I was in the office with a colocated team we had some efficiencies, particularly in collaboration while planning a piece of work that doesn’t work nearly as well online, but my workplace is distributed across three timezones so we don’t get to be colocated with our teams, so there’s no productive talk to offset the recreational talk
So now half of us are in the office, walking around, away from our computers and “collaborating” like management wants, to the absolute exclusion of the other half of the team. And we miss messages, we don’t see reminders, we are just AWAY on Teams to them. And our job is literally done 100% on a computer so all that time NOT on a computer is just wasted. And then when we go to a meeting, we have to walk to a room just to join a teams call and yell at the ceiling so the remote people can hear us. It’s the worse of both worlds. Not remote, not all in office, but mixed.
I could understand it if 100% of employees could be in the office. Then we wouldn’t have to waste time joining a teams call in a meeting room. We could just meet and chat. Fine. But this… This is so bad.
I haven’t been in an office since 2020, but the 15 years prior that I spent numerous offices taught me that much of corporate life is spent dealing with office politics instead of accomplishing anything meaningful.
Those “water cooler conversations” that executives are so keen on are mostly spent shootin’ the breeze or complaining about how Bob from marketing is a fucking moron.
Turns out when people step out for a break or head to the water cooler, they don’t want to talk about work.
Shocking, I know.
I never had any productive water-cooler conversations but I have had many eye-opening and productive smoke breaks with colleagues when that was a thing. The smoking area was the great equalizer that these companies are waxing nostalgic about.
Do you actually do work or are you one of those middle-men that add dubious value?
And, like, do you think I can read my coworker’s screen from across the room and be like “Ah yes, that is TransferProjectView.py. I should tell him that I am also planning on touching that file”?
And adults can learn to explicitly communicate. It’s not impossible. You just type into the box.
I learned that I could never concentrate in the office over other people’s conversations, that the boss could and would interrupt me with trivial matters every few minutes regardless of what I’m working on, that Steve on my right was more concerned to be seen working when sick than to prevent others getting sick, that colleagues will always shout out questions they could answer themselves in a few seconds, thus prompting an hour of random chat, that Steve was always sick, and that Steve was the noisiest eater in the world of the most garlicy food in the world, which made him gassy, that the boss’s assessment of my productivity was chiefly based on hours visibly spent suffering Steve, that Steve considers shopping online to be a social activity, and that the boss can detect headphones going on your head and music starting from 50 feet away and instantly be behind you with a burning question that doesn’t make any sense. Working at home has been more productive for us all, except that the boss and Steve don’t seem to know that Teams offers chat channels other than “General”.
I miss casually bumping into people and chatting, but not because it ever helped with the work.
the boss can detect headphones going on your head and music starting from 50 feet away and instantly be behind you with a burning question that doesn’t make any sense.
I’m sure you realize that the question doesn’t make any sense because they had to think of it on the spot, just to prove that you can’t wear headphones in the office due to all the important ambient office talk you need to be a part of.
One of my best, most competent bosses once said to the team “I don’t understand how you guys can work while listening to music, but as long as your output stays high, I’m not going to interfere.”
Downside: Many companies use open-plan offices, which means it’s too busy to concentrate. So everyone wears noise-cancelling headphones in order to be able to work at all.
The only time I actually felt that being present was a benefit was in a company that had one from for every two people.
It’s true though, and there’s no technological improvement to communication software that can ever change this.
If you sit physically next to your colleagues, you can at all times see what they are working on, talking to each other about, etc., and thereby learn more about the project and the company; if you work remotely and have to explicitly choose to communicate, you miss out on all of that.
Constantly talking to your colleagues degrades the work quality, if anything. I don’t need to hear rumors about our manager’s ex to be able to work on projects
Our team has office days once or twice per month and fuck all gets done on those days. Time is spent on social chitchat, longer coffee breaks and lunch with more small talk, discussing random ideas and almost anything else than actual work. And those are really nice to have, when we’re mostly scattered across few cities and limited to text chat or calls they tend to be strictly about the task at hand. The office days give a sort of a break on normal schedule and while very little gets actually done the discussions often include planning future stuff, going trough previous changes, current situation and workload more broadly and so on. After those days, even if nothing got done, we’re all a bit more on board on almost everything and it’s nice to actually meet the people we interact with every day.
But for actual work, for the stuff we do, the office doesn’t offer anything we couldn’t do remotely. I have more comfortable setup at home than at my cubicle at office, I can listen to whatever I want at how loud I want without disturbing others, no hassle with commute (even if mine is pretty much as short as it can be) and so on.
So what you are saying is that a lot gets done on those days.
Anyway, I agree that hybrid is the best model.
Depends on how far the office is. Remote work allows companies to hire people from across the country, but that means that they can’t RTO everyone.
Well, I think some fully remote is fine. However, I do think hybrid is the best model. Just my opinion.
One of the “dangers” of fully remote is that they become fully global. The amount a company will pay becomes disconnected from the cost-of-living. That creates inequity. Not just that employees in richer areas may be underpaid but also that remote employees for rich companies may be paid far more than their countrymen in their home market.
I don’t really like the idea of running decades of income lottery while the global order works this all out.
Even within a single country it can be fairly extreme.
Found the C-Suite.
Your point is actually what makes remote work so much more effective. When you work in an office, you get used to things working by chance - people seeing what others are doing, talking about it on coffee breaks and so on. When everybody is working remotely, you quickly realize that those things that happened by chance were actually a lot more important than it might seem at first - and then you can do the dumb thing and go back to having it happen by chance, or you can change your processes to ensure that everyone who may have anything to say about what you’re doing, know that you’re doing it.
I miss so many meetings when I’m in the office.
I talk with someone away from my desk and meetings happen without me (doesn’t happen at home, no one there to talk to)
I make a coffee, in the office kitchen, and don’t notice the ding on my computer (doesn’t happen at home as the kitchen is near the study)
Last time I had to be in the office was to support new staff, so the missed meetings were due to talking to the new staff (but mostly about Minecraft)
I know I’m more productive at home, I’m pretty sure all the programmers are happier at home due to the lesser noise
I think when I was in the office with a colocated team we had some efficiencies, particularly in collaboration while planning a piece of work that doesn’t work nearly as well online, but my workplace is distributed across three timezones so we don’t get to be colocated with our teams, so there’s no productive talk to offset the recreational talk
That’s exactly my situation too.
Half my team is out of state and still remote.
So now half of us are in the office, walking around, away from our computers and “collaborating” like management wants, to the absolute exclusion of the other half of the team. And we miss messages, we don’t see reminders, we are just AWAY on Teams to them. And our job is literally done 100% on a computer so all that time NOT on a computer is just wasted. And then when we go to a meeting, we have to walk to a room just to join a teams call and yell at the ceiling so the remote people can hear us. It’s the worse of both worlds. Not remote, not all in office, but mixed.
I could understand it if 100% of employees could be in the office. Then we wouldn’t have to waste time joining a teams call in a meeting room. We could just meet and chat. Fine. But this… This is so bad.
I haven’t been in an office since 2020, but the 15 years prior that I spent numerous offices taught me that much of corporate life is spent dealing with office politics instead of accomplishing anything meaningful.
Those “water cooler conversations” that executives are so keen on are mostly spent shootin’ the breeze or complaining about how Bob from marketing is a fucking moron.
Turns out when people step out for a break or head to the water cooler, they don’t want to talk about work. Shocking, I know.
I never had any productive water-cooler conversations but I have had many eye-opening and productive smoke breaks with colleagues when that was a thing. The smoking area was the great equalizer that these companies are waxing nostalgic about.
Right, so my 3 hour round trip doesn’t cut into that?
Do you actually do work or are you one of those middle-men that add dubious value?
And, like, do you think I can read my coworker’s screen from across the room and be like “Ah yes, that is
TransferProjectView.py. I should tell him that I am also planning on touching that file”?And adults can learn to explicitly communicate. It’s not impossible. You just type into the box.
I learned that I could never concentrate in the office over other people’s conversations, that the boss could and would interrupt me with trivial matters every few minutes regardless of what I’m working on, that Steve on my right was more concerned to be seen working when sick than to prevent others getting sick, that colleagues will always shout out questions they could answer themselves in a few seconds, thus prompting an hour of random chat, that Steve was always sick, and that Steve was the noisiest eater in the world of the most garlicy food in the world, which made him gassy, that the boss’s assessment of my productivity was chiefly based on hours visibly spent suffering Steve, that Steve considers shopping online to be a social activity, and that the boss can detect headphones going on your head and music starting from 50 feet away and instantly be behind you with a burning question that doesn’t make any sense. Working at home has been more productive for us all, except that the boss and Steve don’t seem to know that Teams offers chat channels other than “General”.
I miss casually bumping into people and chatting, but not because it ever helped with the work.
I’m sure you realize that the question doesn’t make any sense because they had to think of it on the spot, just to prove that you can’t wear headphones in the office due to all the important ambient office talk you need to be a part of.
One of my best, most competent bosses once said to the team “I don’t understand how you guys can work while listening to music, but as long as your output stays high, I’m not going to interfere.”
Downside: Many companies use open-plan offices, which means it’s too busy to concentrate. So everyone wears noise-cancelling headphones in order to be able to work at all.
The only time I actually felt that being present was a benefit was in a company that had one from for every two people.
The most brilliant ideas happen on the toilet or in the shower. Naturally- we should poop and bathe with our coworkers.
What ever value you get from chance conversations will overwhelmed by people spending significantly less time actually working.